Barbie Caused One Brand's Snack Food To Explode

No, "Barbie" didn't make Propercorn literally explode. Like, the popcorn popped at a normal level. It sold really, really well, though.

In a report from The Drum, Proper Snacks, which is based in England, says that their sales boomed after they plastered pink, "Barbie"-themed ads all over London's famous double-decker buses. The brand's creative director, Becky Akers, told The Drum that sales have been huge thanks to the popularity of Greta Gerwig's movie, which easily surpassed $1 billion at the box office mere weeks after its July 21 release.

"What the partnerships can do is help us tap into a broader audience, into that wave of relevancy, and, most importantly, show our brand at that mass scale which gives us a really strong hook with retailers," Akers said; apparently, the collaboration with "Barbie" also helped Propercorn find its way into more markets and sell five times as many packs as they initially expected."So it's not only an important brand awareness and relevancy tool, it's genuinely really helping our sales as well. It started as a marketing lever and then it actually flows through to sales as well."

Anyone who wasn't living under a rock before "Barbie's" release knows that the movie's marketing campaign was pretty wild. There was an actual Malibu Dreamhouse available on AirBnB, the movie partnered with luxury brands like Balmain and smaller ones like Kitsch, and was just generally inescapable for a while. Right after the film's release, Variety spoke to Josh Goldstine, the president of global marketing at Warner Bros., about the sheer scale of the campaign — and even he had to admit it was completely unique.

Asked when he thought things really took off, Goldstine said, "The first electric moment was at CinemaCon in 2022. We put out a single image of Barbie in her Corvette in Barbieland. It was one of those moments that took on a life of its own. About a month later, they were shooting in Santa Monica and we knew people were going to be able to take pictures on the street of Margot and Ryan in their multi-color Dayglow outfits on the beach. We started to see the material electrify the culture."

Ultimately, the entire experience was a first, even for Goldstine: "I've been doing this for 35 years. This is one of the most unique experiences I've ever had."

Maybe the funniest part of this entire thing is that food plays absolutely zero role in the actual "Barbie" movie, to the point where there's a running gag about it. As the movie opens, we watch an idyllic morning in the life of Stereotypical Barbie (star and executive producer Margot Robbie) as she gets dressed and primps, only to head into her kitchen and grab a waffle and some milk. None of it is real, and when Barbie Land is turned upside down by Barbie's existential crisis, everything goes wrong; the waffles are burnt and the milk, despite not existing, is "expired."

When she heads to the real world to solve said existential crisis, Barbie is confronted with real food and drink, and flubs the experience at every turn, from dumping water all over herself (saying she doesn't usually expect cups to contain real liquid) to struggling to drink a cup of tea with her creator Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman). Presumably, this changes when Barbie becomes a real person at the end of the film, but it's still a great ongoing bit.